However, that may not be the only problem there is. TA's and Cablecards are notorious for issues leading from cableco account configuration problems... (improperly balanced or configured accounts etc). Since TWC is mostly Cisco based and that is what is typically discussed here, I dont know if Moto based systems have the same kind of issues. That said... the first thing I would do is clean up the signal and get the SNR's up to snuff. Then I would reinitialize the account and re-hit the boxes and see what results.

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SCSIRAID--Thanks so much for the input....by means of update, Time Warner no-showed again last night. The tech actually called me at 3:30 to tell me he would be late for the 4:00-5:00 appointment...said it would be closer to 5:45 as he was still on a job. I told him that was fine and that I would be home at that time...just call back when on the way. 6:30 rolls around and I call TW to check on the status...appointment has been closed because no one was home when the tech arrived (this is not true--wife home all day, I got home by 5:15). I blew a gasket, but a lot of good that did....I am now rescheduled again for Friday afternoon...the best retention department would do was to offer a $20 missed appointment credit, or as I was told by the supervisor I spoke to....we would be happy to process a disconnect order for you.

At any rate...needless to say, were it not for the fact that TW is the only option for me to continue to use my TiVo's, I'd be gone so fast....

So, SCSIRAID, back to the issue at hand .when the tech theoretically arrives tomorrow, what should he do to make sure that he, Cleans up the signal and get the SNR's up to snuff. What exactly should I expect that he will do?

I appreciate your help .we started losing channels in the bedroom last night, too which is so odd I had none of these problems prior to the appointment last weekend when all they did was add internet service .I cant begin to understand why that would affect my two bedroom units.

SCSIRAID--Thanks so much for the input....by means of update, Time Warner no-showed again last night. The tech actually called me at 3:30 to tell me he would be late for the 4:00-5:00 appointment...said it would be closer to 5:45 as he was still on a job. I told him that was fine and that I would be home at that time...just call back when on the way. 6:30 rolls around and I call TW to check on the status...appointment has been closed because no one was home when the tech arrived (this is not true--wife home all day, I got home by 5:15). I blew a gasket, but a lot of good that did....I am now rescheduled again for Friday afternoon...the best retention department would do was to offer a $20 missed appointment credit, or as I was told by the supervisor I spoke to....we would be happy to process a disconnect order for you.

At any rate...needless to say, were it not for the fact that TW is the only option for me to continue to use my TiVo's, I'd be gone so fast....

So, SCSIRAID, back to the issue at hand .when the tech theoretically arrives tomorrow, what should he do to make sure that he, Cleans up the signal and get the SNR's up to snuff. What exactly should I expect that he will do?

I appreciate your help .we started losing channels in the bedroom last night, too which is so odd I had none of these problems prior to the appointment last weekend when all they did was add internet service .I cant begin to understand why that would affect my two bedroom units.

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I would expect him to take his signal analyzer and look at signal quality where the cable enters your house. That would tell him whether the problem is backward or forward from that point. Then he would walk forward or backward thru the cabling and replace coax connectors and spltters till he finds the culprit. He can look at the levels on TA's and other STB's without even being at your house IF they are in 2 way mode and able to communicate else he can check there with the same signal analyzer.

I would expect him to take his signal analyzer and look at signal quality where the cable enters your house. That would tell him whether the problem is backward or forward from that point. Then he would walk forward or backward thru the cabling and replace coax connectors and spltters till he finds the culprit. He can look at the levels on TA's and other STB's without even being at your house IF they are in 2 way mode and able to communicate else he can check there with the same signal analyzer.

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Thanks...let's see what happens...at this point, I'll be happy to just have someone show up at my apartment.

Time Warner tech on the way now...took an executive level escalation to get someone's attention....hopefully he is successful.

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Hopefully they send an actual TWC Employee and not a contractor. The in house techs seem to be more knowledgeable.

TWC worked their butts off with me back when TiVo had undiagnosed pixelation problems on SDV channels. They ended up sending an engineer up from Charlotte with about 100K of test equipment which allowed us to figure out what was going on.

I would expect him to take his signal analyzer and look at signal quality where the cable enters your house. That would tell him whether the problem is backward or forward from that point. Then he would walk forward or backward thru the cabling and replace coax connectors and spltters till he finds the culprit. He can look at the levels on TA's and other STB's without even being at your house IF they are in 2 way mode and able to communicate else he can check there with the same signal analyzer.

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How sophisticated is that signal analyzer? How does it assess tilt, or variation of signal strength or SNR with frequency over the band? I guessing maybe it looks af several discrete 6 MHz bands spread over the band. Does it do any QAM demodulation to check the bitstream quality? My guess is it doesn't.

I'm still amazed (and grateful) at the work you did with TWC and TiVo to get the SDV glitch problem fixed. I get momentary pixelations several seconds after transitions between programs and commercials which I suspect result from an inability of the Tivo HD decoders to handle something. These things don't occur with the Cisco or Samsung DVR's on the same cable system and they don't occur for antenna (OTA) signals. I wonder if the Premiere and Elite tuners would perform better.

How sophisticated is that signal analyzer? How does it assess tilt, or variation of signal strength or SNR with frequency over the band? I guessing maybe it looks af several discrete 6 MHz bands spread over the band. Does it do any QAM demodulation to check the bitstream quality? My guess is it doesn't.

I'm still amazed (and grateful) at the work you did with TWC and TiVo to get the SDV glitch problem fixed. I get momentary pixelations several seconds after transitions between programs and commercials which I suspect result from an inability of the Tivo HD decoders to handle something. These things don't occur with the Cisco or Samsung DVR's on the same cable system and they don't occur for antenna (OTA) signals. I wonder if the Premiere and Elite tuners would perform better.

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The analyzers they carry here are quite sophisticated. The even do QAM analysis and show constellation diagrams.

I had a lot of fun with the pixelation issue... It drove me crazy but the 'hunt' for the problem was very enlightening. Im just glad we found it and TiVo fixed it. TWC was good about providing the info as to what was wrong to TiVo.

The analyzers they carry here are quite sophisticated. The even do QAM analysis and show constellation diagrams.
.........

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Can they tune to any 6 MHz band or just to selected frequencies? Also, I wonder if there are different (less sophisticated) boxes that most technicians use. I had one in my house and neither he nor the instrument he used to check signals seemed to be that sophisticated -- and he couldn't explain what it did very well. The instrument was handheld and about the size of a shoe box but not as deep. I suppose the equipment they use could vary with TWC region, of course.

I definitely suspect the attitude towards TiVo varies with TWC region -- I can't imagine my TWC dispatching a fully equipped team of engineers to debug a TiVo problem!

I've been away from using TiVo on TWC cable for about 12 years. My previous experience was with a Series 2 on TWC basic analog cable.

I recently purchased an XL4 and contracted for TWC digital service. They mailed me a cable card but said I needed to stop by the local Cincinnati TWC store to pick up a Tuning Adapter. The store did not have a TA in stock and said they would call when it would arrive at the store in a few days. The TWC rep gave me his mobile phone number to call. After not receiving a call for several days, I called and left messages several days to get a status. I never got a call back. I didn't want to go back to to store and stand in line again. After two weeks of no call back, the rep finally answered his cell and acted surprised that I didn't have the TA. He said the TA would be sent to me by mail and it arrived in two days.

I called the national TWC CC support line and the tech was helpful in authorizing the CC, but I couldn't receive many of the digital channels that I was supposed to get. For example, I could get a good signal on the local ABC HD channel, but no signal on the local NBC HD channel. Using the CC and TA diagnostic screens on the TiVo, the tech said the signal levels were barely in range and he set up a service call.

The service tech came today and found that some of the frequencies were within spec and others were very low at the wall jack. Then it came to me that the last time I used TWC was the basic analog service (locals plus public access channels) and the other channels were blocked by a trap. The rep removed the trap at the entrance to the house and replaced the 40-year-old coax back to the pole.

I've been away from using TiVo on TWC cable for about 12 years. My previous experience was with a Series 2 on TWC basic analog cable.

I recently purchased an XL4 and contracted for TWC digital service. They mailed me a cable card but said I needed to stop by the local Cincinnati TWC store to pick up a Tuning Adapter. The store did not have a TA in stock and said they would call when it would arrive at the store in a few days. The TWC rep gave me his mobile phone number to call. After not receiving a call for several days, I called and left messages several days to get a status. I never got a call back. I didn't want to go back to to store and stand in line again. After two weeks of no call back, the rep finally answered his cell and acted surprised that I didn't have the TA. He said the TA would be sent to me by mail and it arrived in two days.

I called the national TWC CC support line and the tech was helpful in authorizing the CC, but I couldn't receive many of the digital channels that I was supposed to get. For example, I could get a good signal on the local ABC HD channel, but no signal on the local NBC HD channel. Using the CC and TA diagnostic screens on the TiVo, the tech said the signal levels were barely in range and he set up a service call.

The service tech came today and found that some of the frequencies were within spec and others were very low at the wall jack. Then it came to me that the last time I used TWC was the basic analog service (locals plus public access channels) and the other channels were blocked by a trap. The rep removed the trap at the entrance to the house and replaced the 40-year-old coax back to the pole.

Now, I look forward to having TiVo again!

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That experience was about par for TWC Southwest Ohio. Good luck but don't be surprised if you have troubles related to your TA and CableCARD. Most common problems are missing channels and tuning failures requiring re-tuning, or causing recording failures. Check that you can receive all the channels you should (that you care about) since incorrect account setup is a common problem. After that you may still occasionally lose all the SDV channels, usually fixed by power-cycling TA and rebooting TiVo. For the tuning failures there is no solution - TiVo has known about this for years but blames it on your cable system although it seems they could have fixed it in software by detecting the failure and re-tuning.

That experience was about par for TWC Southwest Ohio. Good luck but don't be surprised if you have troubles related to your TA and CableCARD. Most common problems are missing channels and tuning failures requiring re-tuning, or causing recording failures. Check that you can receive all the channels you should (that you care about) since incorrect account setup is a common problem. After that you may still occasionally lose all the SDV channels, usually fixed by power-cycling TA and rebooting TiVo. For the tuning failures there is no solution - TiVo has known about this for years but blames it on your cable system although it seems they could have fixed it in software by detecting the failure and re-tuning.

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I was a new Tivo user and TWC cable customer. I just sent my Tivo Premiere XL4 back & cancelled my service today because of this very reason. In short, after just a few seconds I would get no signal on SDV or non-SDV channels. It was random and would move from channel to channel, one would come back and another would disappear. The only time it wouldn't happen is when three of the tuners were tuned into the same channel and only one was changing channels. Once they all tuned into different channels the issue would occur immediately.

After 5 weeks of replacing cables, checking cable signals, replacing T/As & CableCards, getting a new Tivo box, and adding attenuators bring the SNR to the 29-35db range; Tivo tech support just gave up. The last tech I talked to said it just wouldn't work for me without offering any reason why.

My final call today with customer support revealed something very interesting. I was informed that the Premiere boxes will not work on a system with an analog signal. Not simply they wouldn't receive an analog signal (although mine did) but if there was an analog signal, the box would not be guaranteed to function properly at all. Tech support didn't mention this in all my conversations with them, so the rep could be mistaken (which isn't good). If she is correct then you have to wonder why their tech support didn't mention this immediately.

Sad really because I liked the Tivo. But if it fails to record and get channels on a daily basis, it is simply not worth it.

I just asked about this somewhere else - if I upgrade to a Premiere will I be unable to tune to channels 2-99??? TWC still sends us WGN America on channel 18 and it is the only way I can watch the Cubs....I have to watch the Cubs... LOL!

I just asked about this somewhere else - if I upgrade to a Premiere will I be unable to tune to channels 2-99??? TWC still sends us WGN America on channel 18 and it is the only way I can watch the Cubs....I have to watch the Cubs... LOL!

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Digital SD channels are mapped to channels that analog would have been received on. The digital version of WGN will be received on your channel 18 and it will be crisp and clear. No analog fuzz.

I have been trying for three months now to get my TiVo Premier connected to Time Warner. It has never worked on TW, never. I get to the Downloading Channel information screen and it locks at 75% and goes no further. I have had two different TiVos sent to me and none of them work. I hve had 12-15 different Cable cards inserted, none work. I have had 5 or 6 Tuning Adapters, none work. Nothing works.

Today when the Time Warner guy cane by, he had an email from their home office saying that TiVo software is incompatible with Time Warner and cannot be corrected by Time Warner. In fact, they are to no longe book appointments for TiVo Premiere issues as the problem is TiVos alone.

I have been trying for three months now to get my TiVo Premier connected to Time Warner. It has never worked on TW, never. I get to the Downloading Channel information screen and it locks at 75% and goes no further. I have had two different TiVos sent to me and none of them work. I hve had 12-15 different Cable cards inserted, none work. I have had 5 or 6 Tuning Adapters, none work. Nothing works.

Today when the Time Warner guy cane by, he had an email from their home office saying that TiVo software is incompatible with Time Warner and cannot be corrected by Time Warner. In fact, they are to no longe book appointments for TiVo Premiere issues as the problem is TiVos alone.

I now own a $600 boat anchor.

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I call BS. Downloading the channel guide info has nothing to do with whether you have a working cable card. If the download failed, you might have really poor broadband/DSL service, problem network or if it dials out, phone line problems.

I call BS. Downloading the channel guide info has nothing to do with whether you have a working cable card. If the download failed, you might have really poor broadband/DSL service, problem network or if it dials out, phone line problems.

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I believe he is talking about the 'drill bit' screen where TiVo loads the channel map from the cableco. It does depend on the cablecard to locate and enable tuning the FDC. I suggest you go into DVR Diags and look at OOB SNR.

But the rest is obviously BS. TWC does support Cablecard by order of the FCC. They would love him to believe that crap and just go away but its just not true.

EDIT: However, now that I think about it, the drill bit screen doesnt say anything about percent done. Perhaps you are right and he is talking about downloading the guide info which does have percent complete.... in that case you would be on point...